Hacker News Reader

Comment by lame88 | Hacker News Reader

There's a lot of hype in software. Just like you were hearing about Blockchain startups only when Bitcoin started trading at 5 bazillion USD and now you don't hear nearly as much about it. During 2008-2015ish we went through an insane churn of new JavaScript frameworks and NoSQL database hype.

Yeah it seems to have calmed, but I don't think data science was just hype because it comes from (and somewhat is) probability and statistics, and the rate of data/information that's being produced by and extracted from people seems to be ever increasing. But it absolutely was prone to a hype cycle as with almost anything else in tech. IMO this is a phenomenon exacerbated by venture capital.

View on HN

Most of what we call “data science” is repackaged “data mining” — a skill that goes easily back to the mid-90s. Sure, open source tooling makes it all a lot more accessible today; but IBM / Oracle / etc. have offered similar packages (at MUCH higher price points, of course) for decades.

I think once the hype calmed down, people started to realize that it was largely the same old shit in a much cheaper package — evolutionary rather than revolutionary. Ultimately I think the hype cycle was driven by Moore’s Law more than anything; the fact you could run this type of analysis in a manageable amount of time without needing a huge IBM mainframe was the real innovation.

That hype in software is the reason I wrote a media literacy guide for software engineers. Hype makes it easy to get free marketing and also drives clicks for media and social networks.

https://github.com/nemild/hack-the-media/blob/master/softwar...

Nice, at a glance this is pretty well-detailed. Bookmarked. Wait, I've been hacked!

I've always had this suspicion that open source software is some kind of propaganda, that it's not purely organic. The work is hard, the benefits are huge, yet the contributors are paid zilch. If I were a big company I would for sure want to win "the hearts of engineers" as you say, to sway them to contribute software critical to my needs, and to pay nothing for it.

I'm a "data scientist" and couldn't agree more. There are a lot of companies that benefit from hyping emerging tech and careers to a point of saturation, these include bootcamps, consulting firms and service providers. The market has calmed but I wouldn't say it was just hype (obviously I'm biased!)

> IMO this is a phenomenon exacerbated by venture capital.

Not just VCs. It's a whole mafia gang consisting of tech reporters and founders also. They all have their vested interests - reporters want new stories and founders want funding and growth.

Slack, VR, AR - they all went through this cycle. Sometimes, it's a bit annoying.

Right, I don't mean the VCs themselves or any particular parties - rather more the expanded role of venture capital in tech startups (esp. looking for unicorns) allowing companies to ride out net losses for long periods of time, distorts our perception of technology and business in a variety of ways, including this hype problem.

What might be a good indicator: is "data science" taught in major universities?

UC Berkeley has an undergraduate data science major. The choices and bureaucracy of creating new majors is also prone to hype though, so it might not be the best indicator.

Agreed - many state universities are cashing in on industry trends, just at a slower pace. You can see it with the various weirdly specialized masters programs and especially certain online degree programs.

For us, “data science” is just doing research on the company’s data. We hire trained researchers - PhDs or PhD candidate dropouts - regardless of specialization. One of our most prolific and respected trained in political science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com